Fantasy fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Mythology, Celtic -- Fiction
Among those who came to look at him and to listen to him was the
daughter of a little king who lived a great way off; and when he saw her
he loved, for she was beautiful, with a strange and pale beauty unlike
the women of his land; but Dana, the great mother, had decreed her a
heart that was but as the heart of others, and when she considered the
mystery of the hawk feathers she was troubled with a great horror. He
called her to him when the assembly was over and told her of her beauty,
and praised her simply and frankly as though she were a fable of the
bards; and he asked her humbly to give him her love, for he was
only subtle in his dreams. Overwhelmed with his greatness, she half
consented, and yet half refused, for she longed to marry some warrior
who could carry her over a mountain in his arms. Day by day the king
gave her gifts; cups with ears of gold and findrinny wrought by the
craftsmen of distant lands; cloth from over sea, which, though woven
with curious figures, seemed to her less beautiful than the bright cloth
of her own country; and still she was ever between a smile and a frown;
between yielding and withholding. He laid down his wisdom at her feet,
and told how the heroes when they die return to the world and begin
their labour anew; how the kind and mirthful Men of Dea drove out the
huge and gloomy and misshapen People from Under the Sea; and a multitude
of things that even the Sidhe have forgotten, either because they
happened so long ago or because they have not time to think of them; and
still she half refused, and still he hoped, because he could not believe
that a beauty so much like wisdom could hide a common heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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